Encouraging the patient to engage in the treatment process may lead to the improvement of the quality of health care. For instance, if the patient has better understanding of the situation and the treatment options, the patient may become more compliant to the process, leading to more satisfaction on the final result. Statistics show that 10% of all hospital admissions and 23% of nursing home admissions are due to the patient failure to follow the treatment routine. On the other hand, there are evidences that suggest that the participation of the patient in the decision making process can improve the quality life of the patient and bring measurable success in the treatment process.
It has been suggested that empathy (1) makes patients more forthcoming about their symptoms and concerns, thus, facilitating medical information gathering, which, in turn, yields more accurate diagnosis and better care; (2) helps patients regain autonomy and participate in their therapy by increasing their self-efficacy; and (3) leads to therapeutic interactions that directly affect patient recovery (High Extraversion).
Making connections and developing empathy may be fundamental to caring and enhance the therapeutic potential of patient-clinician relationships. However, there are barriers to achieve this, including lack of medical knowledge from patient side, or the fact that some patients are not comfortable having the discussion with their health care providers, e.g., doctors. Sometimes the patient has lack of understanding of the appropriate medical terms of the patient's complaints/issues. Therefore, it becomes difficult to search for the health care providers with relevant specialties matched with the patient's requirement. Even if the patient were able to find the provider with the appropriate specialties, there is often no guarantee beforehand, how comfortable the communication with the selected provider would be in terms of matching personality with the patient. Moreover, it is difficult for the patient to grab the relative information regarding the health problem like how to deal with the medical issue, what the biggest concerns and treatment options are, and what to talk about with the health care provider during the consultation.
Many existing systems try to match patients with physicians by match operations that depend on entities (search terms, such as “location, distance, expertise) and, as a result there is limited or no opportunity for the patients to be aware of how comfortable they would be in communicating with the doctor or with the treatment approach that was suggested by the doctor for the specific ailment and/or health concerns.
It would be beneficial if there were a cognitive solution, which will provide references to relevant information about the problem and prepare the patient for the treatment process, for example, from the early stage of the process.